


Center Cannot Hold

by lalaietha



Series: Ten Thousand Things [16]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-25
Updated: 2012-04-25
Packaged: 2017-11-04 07:11:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/391164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lalaietha/pseuds/lalaietha





	1. Chapter 1

Eun wakes Mai with a soft tapping at the door. Zuko is sleeping in his office tonight and Katara sleeps deeply, only stirring a little when Mai disentangles herself from limbs and bedclothes, going back to sleep at Mai's untruth of _nothing important_. It undoubtedly helps that Mai knows she is absolutely silent as she slides her feet into soft-soled shoes and wraps herself in one of her simpler black linen robes - currently discarded on the floor, but a night emergency could cope with her being slightly wrinkled - tying the sash as she crosses to the door between her bedroom and her own office. She slides it open, steps through and slides it closed again, all with little more than a breath of sound.

Mai inherited Eun, after a fashion. The woman had certainly not been the head of either Ozai's spies or Azula's smaller, more dedicated corps; Mai wouldn't have trusted her if so. Eun had been invisible, competent and unnoticed and doing the work she did because she was good at it, and because it protected the nephew she had care of. That nephew now moves around in one of those chairs made at the Northern Air Temple, and that and his education and provision buys Eun's loyalty very effectively. 

Mai prefers learning from other people's mistakes, if she can. And she has learned her lessons about fear. Fear is best as a distant shadow, unnamed and only noticed if you take the time to look. Certainly, Eun knows that betrayal would mean Mai would hunt her down like a very, very dedicated tiger; Mai prefers Eun to keep her mind on why she wouldn't want to betray Mai anyway. 

Or Zuko, of course. 

Eun is not tall. She is slender and unremarkable except for how short she keeps her hair. She wears a dusty black, black that's spent too much time in the sun and so faded and worn, and as a result disappears totally into shadows in a way that clean blacks don't. She's pulled her hood and face-mask down, and she's frowning slightly. 

"Well?" Mai demands, shortly, because it's the middle of the night and she's tired. 

Eun bows, fist beneath palm. "A problem, my Lady," she says, and Mai holds her temper. 

" _Well?_ " 

"Princess Azula has left her mother's house," Eun says, and Mai's irritation evaporates. "We believe she is going to her father's prison. If so, she will be there soon. We do not think either her mother or her physician know." 

Mai says nothing, does not need to say anything. 

Is already taking blades and darts out of the boxes where they rest. 

 

The agreement has always been this: Mai pretends the risks Ursa is taking don't make her skin crawl, and Ursa pretends not to know that Mai has every move Azula makes, in Ursa's house or out of it, watched more closely than a cat-owl watches an elephant-rat. And they both pretend they don't know that some day, Mai may have to do something about Ursa's second child, and what a vicious disaster it'll be if that happens. 

Meanwhile, Zuko pretends he doesn't actually have a sister, much, and nobody bothers him about it. Of such lies, Mai's mother said once, are happy lives and families made. 

So Mai knows, has always known, what goes on in her mother-in-law's walls. The Dowager Princess Ursa has a house, by Fire Nation custom of centuries, by which the custom actually means "a mansion almost two-thirds the size of the palace as long as you count the house gardens, which are all behind very high walls in any case, so you might as well". It's a home and a retreat; Ursa isn't the first Dowager, really, who sometimes feels out of place in the world her child is building. And in Ursa's case, it's where she keeps her daughter, who until a few weeks ago looked like she'd be screamingly crazy for the rest of her life. 

Mai had hoped that would be true. Without her bending, an insane Azula was an Azula who only posed a threat to people in arm's reach. She watched the parade of doctors with a small sense of relief each time one of them gave up, or transgressed against Ursa's stated rules and was thrown out. 

Now, the Northern Tribe waterbender's been there for months, and the reports her spies give her haven't been good for Mai's peace of mind. 

She'd been surprised someone from the Water Tribe would come. Then Katara had heard the name and said, "oh, _him_ ," with a roll of her eyes that said everything. Mai only quietly hoped he'd fail, too. And for months, it didn't even seem he'd tried very hard. 

And now - 

It worries Mai. And it worries Mai as she moves through shadows, the hood of her own cloak raised, towards the loneliest of the Capital's prison, that she might have to kill Azula here, now, tonight, and what that may bring down. 

The night is cool, almost cold. It's overcast, making a deeper darkness, the kind that seems to eat the light of lanterns left out of doors. One of Mai's agents should still be on Azula's heels, and should be good enough to do that unseen. It'll still be best if Mai can get there before Azula does, to be able to stop her own agent and take the final steps herself. This isn't something Mai wants left to anyone but herself. It worries her too much. 

Briefly, it occurs to her that she might also need to worry about how loudly Zuko and Katara will both shout when they know that she was here, herself, at three or four months pregnant. But it's a much smaller concern. 

 

She does get there before Azula. So she's standing in a shadow to watch a figure with a too-familiar stride make her way up the path and to the prison. Azula's gotten that back, at least; she walks with the same arrogance she always did. She does, however, wear a hooded cloak. 

Mai waits until the apparently-not-mad-any-longer princess walks by and then slips into the compound behind her, scaling the wall so that she'll be able to come down to Ozai's prison from above and not have to avoid Azula's attention in torch-lit corridors. Mai isn't forgetting that Azula knows her, too. 

The blades in reach of Mai's left hand are coated with a paralytic. Those in reach of her right are coated with poison. And on top of that, they'll kill just fine all by themselves. 

There is a guard by the window she lets herself into. After he's finished scraping Mai tells him to get the rest of them up and away from the deeper cells. Her own agent will do as he knows she'd want him to, but ordinary guards could make this whole thing difficult. Mai doesn't want difficult. For that matter, she doesn't want any of this at all.


	2. Chapter 2

I know I'm being followed. Of course I know. Mai obviously kept every _good_ agent I ever had, though, because this one isn't bad. I assume someone ran off to tell her when I left my mother's house, as well. _I_ certainly wouldn't have had someone like me so close without a lot of spies and precautions, and Mai isn't stupid. 

And if someone's run off to warn her, she'll probably come herself. I know how she thinks. 

I ignore my tail, and I don't bother searching the shadows for Mai when I get to the prison. This _certainly_ isn't about her, and it isn't about my brother, either. Despite what those sitting in the palace these days might think, the world doesn't actually revolve around them. 

Mother will be distressed when she finds out I've gone, but I'll be back, and besides, she hasn't had any distress in almost three weeks so she's probably due. She might forget how to look mournful or determined if I didn't give her some kind of distress every so often. This isn't about her, either, or my water-peasant healer. Not even my cramped little world revolves around them. 

When there isn't even a single guard to impede my progress I know Mai's somewhere in the tower. I smile into the gloom: how very Mai. She would be like that. Can't have a simple _guard_ accidentally killing the mad princess. Not when Mai has such a terrible grudge left to assuage. It doesn't matter anyway. It just means I'm saved some tediousness. 

I stop outside the door but only long enough to pick the lock. The door isn't the important part of this prison, anyway. The door is just for show and to give a certain finality to the closing. When it swings open I can see the cage beyond. 

I take the torch. It isn't as if either of us can do anything with it, anyway. I set it in the ring, push my hood back and for a few minutes I deign to wait and see if he'll say anything. If the curled miserable ball of rags in the corner of the cage will unfold and manage . . .something. Even an empty taunt. But as the seconds flow by there's nothing. 

So I say, "Hello, Father," and I wait again. 

For a moment I think he's already dead - they do say he keeps trying to starve himself and then giving up on it - but then his head rises and his spine uncurls and I can look my Father and my Fire Lord in the face one more time. 

I'd been slightly concerned that the voices would start again, or the disorientation, but in spite of where I am and what I'm doing, my mind stays depressingly clear. If I were the sort to sit around uselessly wishing for reality to be other than it is, I might have wished it weren't. The cell stinks of unwashed human, rotting food, and something else that's more of a taste to the air than a real smell. It doesn't have to. My brother, after all, prides himself in not being inhumane - even for our father he would have clean clothes brought, and water to wash with. But what's there to be smelled is nothing compared with what's there to be seen. 

There can't be anything pleasant in seeing an idol brought this low. It's even worse when he's done at least half of it to himself. Filthy and ragged, haggard and hopeless, the thing in front of me isn't even a man anymore, it's a worm in human shape, gnawing at itself, too broken to live but too afraid of pain to die. They say he starves himself but then eats again and withers, curled in his little cage, silent. When my uncle was put in here, he fought. He shaped himself, honed himself, dragged an aged body back to its peak and when he broke out he did it on the day of Black Sun, without any fire. There's nothing to stop this creature from doing the same thing. My doddering stupid _uncle_ did it. 

This thing hasn't even tried. 

Once I worshipped my father, completely and utterly; once, he was probably the only thing in the world I knew how to be loyal to. And I was. I would throw anyone else to the sea-lions, but I did it all for him, and I worshipped and loved him, and myself in his image.   
Looking at him now, that's humiliating. 

Mother has spent a lot of time trying to teach me to hate my father. She's good at doing it subtly. It doesn't work. What I feel isn't about what she wants me to feel; what I care about has nothing to do with her. I'd be angry with her for it if she didn't have so much reason to hate him. A year ago, I would have hated her for it anyway. Nothing she could say means anything. I wouldn't hate him for anything she'd understand, not even leaving me behind while he went to fulfil the plan I made for him. 

But I worshipped my father and now he's become . . . _this_ , and my disgust would make anyone else's hatred look like a candle beside the Comet's inferno. 

I had things I wanted to say, but now they choke me. If I open my mouth, it can only be to spit. I don't want to hear what he'd say back to me. 

I reach into the pocket of my cloak and I throw the stiletto I brought for him across the floor, so that it clatters and bounces within his reach. His eyes widen but I've already turned away; maybe he would have said something but I close the door behind me and stand facing Mai in the corridor. 

I hate her and I miss her. I'm honest enough to admit that to myself, if only because being anything other than honest with myself means Ree feels the need to be honest with me in my place, and I _hate_ listening to her take my soul apart. I hate Mai. It couldn't be any other way. She betrayed me, she chose my idiot weakling brother over me - not only a traitor, but a traitor with unbelievably bad taste. And I miss her sulking and her brooding and her perpetual flawless competence. I miss her being mine. My brother stole her, and that's very difficult for a dragon to handle. 

All of this is distant and doesn't bother me very much here and now. I know she saw everything. She's finally gotten rid of that ridiculous hair-style her mother used to insist on, at least for the moment, replacing it with a simple, sensible braid in her black assassin's clothes. 

"Should you really be out climbing all over the walls in your condition?" I ask blandly, curious whether or not being pregnant is weird enough for her that the jibe will hit home. It doesn't, not enough to show. 

"I almost did that for you, the night after the Comet," Mai says, and she has the better arsenal this time. I make searing sure I show absolutely nothing on my face, but it takes some effort. I don't remember anything about those days, so I would have no way to know. 

"What stopped you?" I ask when I'm quite sure I'll have the same disinterested voice, pretending to consider her in the time between. 

"I don't know," she replies, as if being completely frank. "Why did you leave it up to him?" 

"The fact that I needed to come means he doesn't deserve anything else," I reply, coolly. 

She almost seems to say something else. Then she just steps back and says, "Give my regards to your mother." 

 

I make my way back more directly than I came, because I no longer care about alerting the less sophisticated guards and agents that are inevitably all over the place. I go in the front doors instead of scaling the wall, and derive some amusement from the consternation of the doormen. I walk past all of the darkened rooms till I reach my own, and lock the door behind me. 

A polite pretense. I know Mother has duplicates of all the keys. 

After thinking about it, I don't light the lamp. I don't want to talk to Ree about this. I want to forget it.

*****

Katara's still asleep. Mai hesitates for a heartbeat or three before she lies down, watching her water-bender's shallow dreaming breaths. She debates waking Zuko and telling him now. Ozai will almost certainly be dead by morning, either by his own hands or when he tries to kill his guards and break out. She warned them about that, but if he fights at all, this time he'll make them kill him. 

But after thinking about it, she can't find any way knowing now will be better than knowing tomorrow. So Mai lays herself back out on the bed, curling in behind Katara and falling asleep much sooner than she thought she would.


End file.
